In the end, however, his troops were mustered too late and his fleet proved inadequate; the expedition had to be postponed. Although Henry’s military plans do not appear to have had the full support of the justiciar, another scutage was collected in 1230, and this time the king did set sail, landing at St Mâlo in May. Fighting was desultory and without a clear objective, and Henry proved unable to raise the Normans in rebellion against Louis IX and his iron-willed mother Blanche of Castile. Although the English force did probe as far south as Bordeaux, in the end little was achieved beyond the accumulation of debt. The recovery of his ancestral lands would continue to be a central concern for Henry, yet increasingly his hopes would appear unrealistic.
In the wake of his return from France in October 1230, Henry found himself at odds with de Burgh, who seemed not to share his vision for a Plantagenet revanche on the continent. In the spring of 1231, the Welsh prince Llewelyn ap Iorwerth (Llewelyn the Great) saw the death of the earl of Pembroke as an opportunity to raise a rebellion in Wales. Henry’s efforts to suppress this were undermined by a separate dispute over the succession to the earldom of Pembroke led by Richard Marshal and the king’s own brother, Richard of Cornwall. At that already tense moment, Peter des Roches returned to England and was quickly restored to prominence in Henry’s court. Des Roches had been long absent from the realm on a pilgrimage that had taken him to Jerusalem with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1229, and had seen him flourish as a diplomat, negotiating settlements between Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX in 1230 and between Henry III and Louis IX in 1231. He seemed the perfect foil to de Burgh.
Throughout the first half of 1232, Henry vacillated between the guidance of his two erstwhile mentors. In the spring, he travelled west with de Burgh to negotiate a settlement with Llywelyn, but at the same time he appointed Peter de Rivaux, a kinsman and close associate of des Roches, as treasurer of the king’s household for life. Finally, on 29 July 1232, a violent quarrel broke out between Henry and de Burgh at Woodstock, following which Henry dismissed de Burgh as justiciar. De Burgh was subsequently charged with a wide variety of crimes, both professional and personal – he was even alleged to have poisoned both the earl of Salisbury and the earl of Pembroke. The former justiciar was forced to seek sanctuary – unsuccessfully as it turned out, being removed by force and imprisoned in Devizes Castle – and was stripped of all the lands and wealth he had accumulated since his initial appointment as justiciar by John in 1215.
He would eventually be reconciled with the king prior to his death in 1243, but de Burgh nevertheless died a broken man, having spent his later years ‘in melancholy retirement’, to use Powicke’s evocative phrase.2
The fall of Hubert de Burgh, however, led merely to the elevation of Peter des Roches. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX confirmed Henry’s authority to recover crown rights, which allowed the king to cancel more than 50 grants that had been made to de Burgh’s supporters. Most of these lands and resources immediately found their way into the hands of des Roches’ supporters, including notorious figures from the previous reign such as Engelard de Cigogné, Peter de Mauley and Robert Passelewe. Henry also replaced all of the sheriffs, assigning 21 counties to Peter de Rivaux alone, and manned castles throughout the kingdom with foreign mercenaries, popularly, if inaccurately, described as Poitevins. This aggressive reassertion of royal authority quickly resulted in baronial complaints, and ultimately in a revolt led by Richard Marshal. Although he had little English support, Marshal made common cause with Llywelyn in the summer of 1233 and caused Henry some embarrassment in the ensuing campaign. Under increasing pressure to reform his government, Henry authorized negotiations with Llywelyn in March 1234. In May, he ordered des Roches to leave the royal court and return to his diocese of Winchester, while at the same time dismissing de Rivaux and his associates from office. At long last, Henry III was able to embark upon his kingship out from under the shadow of his two great, but polarizing, mentors.
At this point, it is necessary to assess the personality and character of Henry III.
Henry was not an imposing figure physically. Like his father John, he appears to have stood approximately five feet six inches tall. He is reputed to have had a drooping eyelid, but otherwise his appearance is not remarked upon by contemporary chroniclers. The tomb effigy in Westminster Abbey sculpted by William Torel suggests his features to have been regular and not unattractive. In a number of chronicles, Henry III is described as simplex, yet even as a boy he was said to speak with ‘ gravitas et dignitas’. Almost universally he is described as pious, but this piety has nevertheless tended to be undervalued, with Henry being overshadowed by his Capetian contemporary Louis IX. Henry’s devotion to the cult of Edward the Confessor is well known, and its physical manifestation in the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey is perhaps Henry’s greatest legacy. Less well known, but of considerable importance in assessing Henry’s character, is his devotion to the Virgin Mary. Recent scholarship has convincingly demonstrated that Henry was no less devoted than his brother-in-law Louis to the Marian cult.
He made no fewer than 11 pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, frequently timed to coincide with the feast of the Annunciation. Indeed, it was from the shrine at Walsingham on the vigil of the feast of the Annunciation (24 March) in 1242 that Henry would issue the summons for knight service in support of his grand expedition to recover Poitou. Even when he was unable to be present personally, the king was attentive to the shrine, ordering thousands of tapers to be burned on the feasts of the Assumption, the Virgin’s Conception and the Annunciation. Like Louis IX, Henry was devoted to the Lady Mass, which he celebrated not only on feast days of the Virgin, but also quite frequently on Saturday, the day of the week associated with her in contemporary thought. Even at Westminster, so closely associated with the Confessor, Henry himself laid the foundation stone for the Lady Chapel on the eve of his second coronation in 1220, and in 1256 he ordered the demolition of the upper levels of this chapel so that it might be rebuilt in harmony with the rest of the ongoing reconstruction of the abbey.
Henry’s profound piety is also apparent in his involvement with a relic of the Holy Blood. On 13 October 1247, the king processed barefoot and dressed in a simple cloak from St Paul’s Cathedral to Westminster Abbey carrying a crystal phial, sent to him by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and said to contain a portion of the most precious blood of Jesus Christ. This priceless relic was duly presented to the monks of Westminster and their patron saints, St Peter and St Edward, the latter being the king’s own special patron. Mass was celebrated, and the sermon preached by the bishop of Norwich made specific, and favorable, comparison of this relic to the many relics of Christ’s Passion recently collected in Paris by the king’s brother-in-law, Louis IX. The service was followed by a knighting ceremony in which the king’s Poitevin half-brother, William de Valence, was dubbed a knight. This was clearly meant to be a spectacular celebration of church and state, designed to enhance the prestige of both Henry III and Westminster Abbey.
Unfortunately for Henry, from the outset there seems to have been considerable doubt about the authenticity of the relic. The cult of the Holy Blood was already widespread in thirteenth-century Europe, but the provenance of the various relics was often contentious. The donor in this case, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, had not previously been associated with the Holy Blood. Not only that, but many theologians, especially Dominicans including the great Thomas Aquinas himself, had considerable theological doubts about the possibility of the survival of physical relics of Christ after His Resurrection. The cult of the Holy Blood did succeed elsewhere in England, particularly at Hailes, Ashridge and Glastonbury, yet the Westminster relic quietly fell into obscurity. Here, as in other contexts, Henry’s genuine piety cannot be doubted, yet circumstances conspired against him to diminish the impact of his gesture.
Finally, something should be said about the almsgiving of Henry III. Like all medieval kings, Henry was generous in his gifts to the var
ious religious houses and shrines that he visited. His generosity was largely responsible for the building of houses for the Carmelites at Oxford, the Dominicans at Canterbury and the Franciscans at Norwich, Reading, Shrewsbury and York. Even more impressive, however, as an indicator of the king’s piety, was his practice of feeding the poor ( fraters et pauperes) on a daily basis. The basic number fed per day was 100 (150 if the queen was also in attendance), at a cost of 1–1½ d. per head, a figure equivalent to the daily wages of a labourer. Greater numbers were regularly fed when Henry arrived in a new location. For instance, in April 1260, when the king entered London he fed some 344 paupers, and in August of that year when he entered Winchester he fed another 282. On feast days, the king could be even more generous to the poor. Earlier in 1260, on the anniversary of the death of Edward the Confessor (5 January), Henry had provided meals for an extraordinary 1,500 paupers, whereas the vigil and anniversary of the translation of the Confessor (12–13 October) saw provision for no less than 5,000! That this almsgiving was motivated by genuine piety is clearly suggested by the fact that Henry had the parable of Dives and Lazarus painted on the walls opposite the king’s dais – directly in his gaze as he dined – in the great halls at Ludgershall, Northampton and Guildford, a vivid reminder of the obligation of the rich to care for the poor at peril of eternal damnation. Giving was central to Henry’s sense of self and kingship. He had a royal motto, painted on the walls of the royal residences at both Westminster and Woodstock: ‘qui non dat quod amat non accipit ille quod optat’: ‘He who does not give what he loves, does not receive what he desires.’3
Turning from his piety to his character more generally, Henry III has tended to receive even less favorable treatment. His dependency on father figures early in the reign and on members of his extended family later on has led to the depiction of a weak and fatuous ruler. It has been remarked that ‘the king had objectives without expertise and ambition without energy’.4
This is probably a fair assessment. One of Henry’s greatest failings was his inability to reconcile his ambitious foreign policy with his restricted resources and his own shortcomings as a leader. If modern observers can discern an overarching strategic vision in Henry’s policies, his contemporaries were repeatedly baffled and frustrated by his inability to attain one prize before fixing his gaze upon the next. This inconsistency and lack of resolve was also seen in domestic affairs. Although generous, as a medieval king was meant to be, his patronage was a source of considerable and highly consequential conflict throughout the reign. Not only was he too lavish in his gifts to Savoyard and later Lusignan relatives, he frequently made promises he could not keep, often substituting cash payments in lieu of future grants of land.
His inability to make good on these promises, particularly to Simon de Montfort, was to have disastrous results. Moreover, Henry’s government, increasingly short of money, repeatedly resorted to financial expedients that undermined his frequently professed support for the Magna Carta and the provision of order and justice throughout the realm.
Henry seems to have possessed to a lesser degree the Plantagenet temper for which his son, Edward I, is much better known. The prominent position of Debonereté in the king’s bedchamber was perhaps monitory for the king as much as a challenge to his audience. Henry’s fiery confrontations with Simon de Montfort on numerous occasions are well known and will be discussed below.
But, that Henry’s temper could be frayed not only by the earl of Leicester is indicated by a pair of incidents involving court jesters. On one occasion, Henry is said to have torn the clothes off one of his jesters, while another time he is reported to have thrown one into the Thames! There is a certain sense of wit and irony – and perhaps an element of bitterness – in the king’s order in 1256 to have his lavatory at Westminster painted with a picture of the king of the Garamontes being rescued by his faithful hounds ‘from the sedition plotted against him by his own men’. 5
Nevertheless, Henry seems to have sought harmony in his relationships with family, friends and magnates. His devotion to his queen, Eleanor of Provence, will be considered below, but Henry also demonstrated paternal concern for his children throughout his life, being particularly distressed by the early death of his daughter Katherine in 1257. If his relations with his magnates did not always prove to be harmonious, his idealized vision of these relations is revealed to us by a painting he commissioned in 1243 for Dublin Castle in which he and the queen were depicted sitting with the baronage. This was to be located above the dais in the Great Hall, visible to all present. If Henry III was not a great king, he was a good man.
Henry is also described as having had an artistic temperament, and this is certainly true. Although Henry III is most closely associated with his building programme at Westminster, and rightly so, his involvement at the Tower of London should not be overlooked. Henry’s concern for security, coupled with his aesthetic taste, combined here to result in major building works. Although the decision to build two new towers – one for the king and another for the future queen – was taken during the regency as early as 1220, it was only in the aftermath of the crisis of 1238 that major work was undertaken on the King’s Hall between 1238 and 1241 at a cost of more than £5,000. At the height of his enthusiasm for the Crusade, in 1251 the king ordered the chamber of the king’s chaplain at the Tower of London to be painted with the story of Antiochus the Great. In 1259, during another period of crisis, further construction was undertaken, a curtain wall being built to connect the new domestic apartments with the Coldharbour Gate, completing a walled circuit around the inmost ward. Henry’s building campaign at the Tower demonstrates a keen awareness of symmetry, and serves as a good reflection of his aesthetic sense. Nevertheless, as has been convincingly argued, Henry III should be remembered not so much for transforming the Tower into a favoured royal residence, which it never was for him, as for transforming it into a state-of-the-art fortress with which to intimidate the city of London as well as the king’s baronial opponents.6
But Henry’s interest in domestic architecture was not limited to the Tower. At Westminster Palace, he was responsible for transforming the Great Hall into the ‘Painted Chamber’. This room presented a powerful statement of his vision of kingship. Entering from the west, furthest from the royal bed that could and did function like its French counterparts as a lit de justice where serious legal and political concerns could be resolved, the visitor first encountered the royal motto ( Ke ne dune ke ne tine ne prent ke desire). This injunction to charity was reinforced by images of the Virtues, which occupied the spaces between the windows.Largesce (treading upon Covoitise) and Debonereté (treading upon Ìra) both faced west towards the audience. 7 Angels holding crowns hovered above the Virtues. Behind the king’s bed was a painting of the coronation of Edward the Confessor, whereas on the opposite wall were St Edmund with his ring and St John dressed as a pilgrim. All of this was repainted in the aftermath of the great fire of 1263 during the period of greatest civil unrest in the reign, making this expression of Henry’s ideals all the more remarkable.
It is Westminster Abbey, of course, with which Henry’s artistic ideals and ambitions are most closely associated, and with good reason. In July 1245, Henry ordered the Confessor’s church to be demolished to make way for a more magnificent set of buildings. Under the guidance first of Henry of Reyns and later of John of Gloucester, the Abbey was reconstructed to be a truly royal church. It is true that the design of Henry’s Westminster had its roots in contemporary France, with Reims and Royaumont (in particular) being models. What is most important about the new church is not so much its form as its function. Westminster had long been recognized as the English coronation church, and its association with royalty pre-dated the Conquest and even the Confessor, as Edgar had built a royal residence there in the 960s. This association was reinforced with the canonization of St Edward in 1161 and his translation in 1163. However, by the mid-thirteenth century, Westminster had become more than a royal
residence.
The settlement of the exchequer, the treasury and the law courts in Westminster over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in close proximity to both Westminster Palace and Westminster Abbey, transformed the area into the political capital of England. Henry’s lavish spending on both the Palace and the Abbey reflects this. Henry spent more than the equivalent of 2 years’ revenues, between £40,000 and £50,000, on the construction and decoration of the abbey.
The church was to contain a new shrine for Edward the Confessor and so, like the Painted Chamber, it associated Henry with his patron’s ‘conciliatory vision of kingship’. 8 Here, English kings would not only be crowned, but married and buried. Here, too, they would hold councils and parliaments. Here, would royal majesty be enthroned. The magnificent Cosmati marble pavement before the high altar speaks to this majesty on a cosmic scale.
Let us now return to events as they unfolded with Henry truly his own master at last. Beginning in 1234, 18 years into his reign, the composition of the court was finally of the king’s own choosing. One of his closest associates was a young Frenchman who had arrived in England in 1230 seeking his fortune, Simon de Montfort. Third son of the great warrior who had led the Albigensian Crusade,
Montfort sought to recover the earldom of Leicester to which his family had briefly made claim under John. Initially, Henry was much taken with this witty and self-assured companion, who did in fact receive a share in the Leicester estates within a year, and the title (if not the substance) of earl in 1236. After all, on his mother’s side, Simon was the great-great-great grandson of William the Conqueror. In January 1238, Simon would also become the king’s brother-in-law through his marriage to Henry’s sister Eleanor, the widow of William (II) Marshal, the late earl of Pembroke. In the long term, this marriage would cause greater discord than harmony between the two men, but this could not have been foreseen at the time. In 1238, it seemed to bode well for the futures of both men.
The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty Page 3
